The Bektashi Begat the Shriners?

“[The Bektashi] are even said to be affiliated to some of the French Masonic Lodges. One thing is certain; the order now consists almost exclusively of gentlemen of education, belonging to the Liberal, or Young Turk party.”

I’m not that familiar with the Bektashi Order, but it turns out that this politico-mystical secret society – directly or indirectly – was the inspiration behind the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.

Freemasons Dr. Walter M. Fleming, 33°, and William J. Florence, 32°, founded the Shriners in 1870. And in recounting the origins of their Order, Florence and Fleming corroborate the above statement by Richard Davey.

While in Marseilles, France, because he was known to be a Mason, Florence was invited to an exoteric ceremony at a Bokhara Shrine. Soon after, he visited Algiers, and there too was permitted to witness other proceedings in a Bokhara Temple.

Fleming elaborates:

Mr. Florence was entertained as a Mason at Marseilles, in Bokhara Temple of the Arabic Bektash. He at this time simply witnessed the opening session of the exoteric ceremonials which characterize the politico-religious order of Bektash of Oriental Europe. A monitorial, historic, and explanatory manuscript he also received there. It did not embrace the esoteric Inner Temple exemplification or obligation, nor the ” Unwritten Law,” which is never imparted to anyone except from mouth to ear. Shortly afterward Mr. Florence was similarly favored in Algiers and Aleppo. Through letters and commendations he finally secured the manuscript monitor, history and descriptive matter from which sprang the Order in this country. It was in Algiers and Aleppo that he was received into the Inner Temple under the domain of the Crescent and first became possessor of the esoteric work, the “Unwritten Law” and the Shayk’s obligation. Subsequently he visited Cairo, Egypt, and was admitted, and collected more of Oriental history and the manuscript of “Memorial Ceremonials.” But Mr. Florence was never fully recognized or possessed of authority until long after his return to America. All he possessed was a disconnected series of sheets in Arabic and French, with some marginal memoranda made by himself from verbal elucidation in Aleppo. Through Professor Albert L. Rawson these, with others received afterward through correspondence abroad, comprised the translations from which the Order started here. Mr. Florence and myself received authority to introduce the Order here.

It doesn’t get any more cut-and-dried than that. Moreover, Stevens wrote (p. 4) that, according to Fleming and Florence, “[t]he chief of these [Bektashi] dervishes at Mecca is declared to be the principle officer of the Arabic Mystic Shrine.”

In the Islamic world, the Bektashi are traditionally looked upon as heretics. Albert Doja says they began in the 13th or 14th Century, and their beliefs comprise a syncretism “of shamanism … Sufi doctrines … Buddhism, Manichaeism, Christianity and antique religions.” Other influences include Neo-Platonism, the Kabbalah, number symbolism, reincarnation and metempsychosis (e.g. dualistic gnosticism and/or pantheism).

The Bektashi were also in close contact with the Sabbatean Movement from the start. When the false messiah, Sabbatai Zevi would visit Constantinople, for instance, he became “accustomed to living in a dervish monastery,” Gershom Scholem writes, “[a]nd it can hardly be doubted that there were early secret ties between the order of the Bektashi and the Donmeh.”

It is known that among the Bektashi orders the doctrine of takiye (dissimulation) was widely practiced; it permitted the adherents of even radical mystical heresies in Islam to appear to the outside world as a wholly orthodox segment of the Sunni community in order to avoid persecution. It is also known that their enemies always claimed this duplicity of the Bektashi and accused them of it. Often they also added even more far-reaching accusation that the Bektashi, or at least certain of their subgroups, secretly subscribed to a religious nihilism. Now it is just this theory and practice of takiye which, though here for purely internal Jewish reasons, determined the Donmeh’s way of life in which the external appearance stood in radical contradiction to what they taught and stood for. Their common status as a mystical heresy with often extreme aberrations was bound to create sympathy between these two groups. Perhaps it is also no accident that the cemetary of the most extreme group of the Donmeh, with the grave of its leader Baruchya Russo (in Islam: Osman Baba), was located in the immediate vicinity of the Bektashi monastery of Salonika. According to Donmeh tradition, moreover, aside from several groups of Sabbatian families which still later joined them from Poland, a number of Turkish and Greek non-Jewish families also passed over and joined one of their subsects.

Writing in 1906, H. N. Brailsford said of the Bektashi, “their place in Islam is perhaps most nearly analogous to that of Freemasonry in Christianity”; and noting that “Bektashis themselves like to imagine that the Freemasons are kindred spirits.” Also, in a 1959 book called Parade to Glory, which was given to Shriners as a history, the Bektashi origin of their Order is again stressed. And, curiously:

Among the modern promoters of the principles of the [Bektashi and/or the “Shriners”] Order in Europe, one of the most noted was Herr Adam Weishaupt, a Rosicrucian (Rose Cross Mystic) [which he certainly was not], and professor of law in the University of Ingolstadt, in Bavaria, who revived the Order in that city on May 1, 1776. Its members exercised a profound influence before and during the French Revolution, when they were known as the Illuminati, and they professed to be teachers of philosophy. From the central society at Ingolstadt, branches spread through all Europe. Among the members, there are recorded the names of Frederick the Great, Mirabeau, a Duke of Orleans, many members of royal families, literary, scientific and professional men, including the illustrious Goethe, Spinoza, Kant, Lord Bacon, and a long list besides, whose works enlarge and free the mind from the influence of dogma and prejudice.

5 Responses

Interesting. Iam a alevi bektashi from the tribe Areli and also a freemason. I took the freemasonry as a paralell path to the bektashi order. If you are interested I could tell you how the bektashi order is built. The good thing is that I can explain you everything without to break my promise that I gave when I get initiated in the masonry. Cause Iam not talking as a Mason today. Iam talking as a bektashi. We the bektashis have grade sYstem as in the masonry. 4 doors and 40 steps. Every door has a special theme. The last door is named as hakikat. Means. Illuminated or truth. In the last door we learned that Hz.Ali is not our prophet like we thought since our childhood. We have to replace the word Ali with light. The word Allah with hak (logos) and Mohammed with darkness. So you get a triangle. The first god logos which is the creator of everything, light in the right down triangle corner and darkness in the left down triangle corner. Why do we have to hide this? Cause we bektashis are not really bektashis. That is just a name. It is the idiology behind that. In the begining we was the inner circle of Sumer then of Egypt than we change our clothes again and our name was paulicians. After that bogolomiden (German name). After that many other names. So this ideology is living since thousends of years in different society’sand different years and places. Means not that we was connected to each other. Just the idiologY or doctrine was always the same. We start to change our clothes more after Byzantine empire and ottoman empire. Cause they where extremely brutal and killed everyone who was different. but I don’t have to tell you the brutality which was done in the name of the fake beliefs of the church and the Muslims. the last cloth what we as bektashik took was the Islamic cloath.
Why we have to hide? Our holy book “kudret” (Might) was destroyed. And the ottoman empire killed everyone who was writing the old beliefs or just talk about it. So we find a way. It is called nefes. The book of kudret is inside poems and music in a code. The problem is that most I’d the people don’t understand it and over time we really get islamized. Not all but 30%. Caus they don’t understand. I will explain you more if you want. And also the secret inside the secret. Keep care.

Peace be unto you.
Some wise person once taught that men would thirst for truth so much that they would pass by a spring of pure clear water to read just one book. As the world was it must also return, perhaps we are witnessing the return.